1. French Class

Boring. Mind-numbingly, soul-crushingly boring. So boring I suspected my ears might fall off and my brain turn liquid and pour out through my nose if I have to endure much more. Thank God, there was only one more year of this torture to endure before I could at last go free. This ordeal would be over forever. I groaned under my breath. Torture.

I was in second-year French. Paul had taunted me mercilessly about it. It’s not exactly the most masculine of languages. But two language credits were required for graduation, and Spanish had been full. Plus, I loved the teacher.

Embry, fortunately, was in the class too. We hacked the school computer so at least two of us would be together at all times. It’s just safer that way, sticking together. Easier to stay controlled. I rolled my eyes at him across the room. He laughed.

The teacher coughed pointedly, and I turned my attention to the overhead with an exaggerated gesture. She had begun writing the answers to the homework on the lit patch of wall.

The first word stifled me. As the sentence continued, it tightened like choking hands around my throat and I strangled.

Claire est allee…

Those damn example names. Why did they have to use them? Stupid textook.

“Quil, le premier, s’il te plait.”

I read the answer in a dead voice, trying not to reveal emotion at the name. “Claire est allee au cine avec…” no, I couldn’t say it. Couldn’t stand it. It was halfway between ironic and agonizing.

“Avec?” she prompted. Embry’s eyes met mine, full of pity, and urged me silently. Just say it, don’t think about it… but I couldn’t help it. The words were too full of meaning to be stripped of pain.

“Avec son nouveau copain, Pierre.”

I choked on it. Pierre… I hated him, and he didn’t even exist. And hate is a dangerous emotion, far too close to rage.

Rage. It rippled down my spine, the heat burning and stretching, telling me to change, to tear, to…

“Control!” Embry whispered, fierce and low. His eyes showed fear this time. I forced it down my arms, my trembling body. Control. We must pretend to be normal, to be human, above all else.

“Quil, est-ce que tu as besoin d’aller a l’infirmiare?”

The nurse… “Non… um, oui. Oui, merci.”

“Embry, vas-tu avec lui.”

I knew there was a reason I liked that teacher. Embry and I walked out together. He was utterly silent, that is, until we reached the outside of the school. It didn’t take words to expres neither of us intended to go to the nurse.

“Quil…”

I cut him off rudely. “I know, Embry.”

We stood silently for a minute, before he began talking very quietly and gently, like he was adressing a child, though it didn’t feel condescending. “It’s not your fault. We all know it, and it’s painful, I know. It isn’t easy for any of us. But you have to pretend like…”

“Like Claire doesn’t exist.” It was heresy. It hurt as it left my lips. “I can’t do it. I know I should be able to, but I can’t.”

It was a simple matter to find the anger, natural to push it from my heart through my veins with the pulsing of blood. The warmth leapt and zoomed, expanding to fill the world. I phased, finding the form that knew how to deal with the fury. It was almost too easy to become my second self and pad into the forest.

Emby and I raced through the branches.

The ground, the trees, Embry calm and soothing in my mind… the world was so much simpler this way.

Sometimes I considered pulling a Jake and never changing back- but I have to. You see, someday my Claire will come back and need me. Someday she’ll be something more tangible than nightmarish pain at the simplest things. Someday she’ll be real… someday.